THE DALLES — Wasco County Sheriff Lane Magill, called one of the “paramount” voices in Oregon law enforcement focusing on the needs of the mentally ill, recently received a prestigious state award for his work in that area.
Lane Magill, Wasco Co. Sheriff
Probably more than most, Magill has personally borne witness to the terrible price some in society pay for the dire lack of mental health care. He once pleaded with Veterans Affairs (VA) to urgently help a hospitalized suicidal veteran, who was handcuffed to the bed to prevent self-harm, only to be told the wait time for help was 30 days. The veteran died by suicide a week later.
And dozens of times he stood in the sheriff’s office lobby, just listening to a seriously mentally ill woman pour out her troubles. With no real help available, she would also later die by suicide.
“This is wrong,” Magill said, as he grew emotional recounting their stories. “We can’t do this as human beings. We have to serve these people.”
In 2019, Magill took the reins of a local effort to build a multi-building crisis resolution campus in The Dalles. Now, finally, plans are to break ground in 2025 on the first 16-bed building, for treating substance use disorder.
His years of work have not gone unnoticed.
Last month, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), in consultation with Gordon and Sharon Smith, awarded Magill the Gordon and Sharon Smith New Freedom Award.
Other recipients of the award, recognizing work dedicated to improving access to mental health care, have included U.S. senators and governors.
Chris Bouneff, the executive director of National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Oregon, nominated Magill.
The award goes to leaders who use their influence to advance awareness and reforms so people who live with mental illness live better lives, Bouneff said.
“Lane is a shining example of that,” Bouneff said. “Lane is probably one of the paramount voices in law enforcement to use his platform to make sure people have appropriate access to things that aren’t the jail.”
Magill knows “this isn’t a problem that you arrest your way out of, and if you’ve gotten to arrest, that’s at the end of a long chain of failure,” Bouneff said.
Magill knows that “mental illness is not a law enforcement issue, it’s a healthcare issue.”
Kimberly Lindsay, now executive director of Community Counseling Solutions, which provides a range of services to Eastern Oregon counties, worked with Magill consulting on the crisis resolution center project.
She introduced Magill at the award ceremony Oct. 24 in Portland. “I have been part of his evolution as he has learned more about the nuances of behavioral health,” Lindsay said.
“I don’t think there’s a lot of sheriffs in Oregon that have his empathy and the deep care and concern for the behavioral health population,” Lindsay said. “Maybe they do, but they have not been as involved in the work as Lane has been, both in the stabilization center he’s been working on but the various committees he’s been part of on the state level in the last several years.”
When Linsday began helping with the local project, she noted Magill was not only “clearly the champion of the project,” but also “kind, receptive, eager to learn and deferential.”
Magill told her that jail was not where people with behavioral health issues needed to be, “and he was no longer going to stand idly by while people suffered,” she said in her remarks.
She said Magill leads from the heart. “While sworn to uphold the law, Lane extends grace. He understands the importance of being tough but balances that with the need to be merciful,” she said.
“Lane has and is actively advocating for those who have lost or have had their voices silenced,” she added.
Magill said he’s seen countless individuals and their family members in the sheriff’s lobby, at wit’s end, with nowhere to go and nowhere to get help. “They’re in massive crisis. And I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go. I want to help. All I can do is sit there and listen to them.”
The first phase of the project has $12.5 million in state funding in hand, and the building will be on county-owned land at 10th and Walnut in The Dalles.
As for the project itself, which envisions multiple 16-bed buildings, each with a different function — such as treating substance use disorder or treating mental health issues — a key roadblock has emerged in the form of a federal law dating back decades.
It dates from the era of deinstitutionalization in the 1960s and 1970s. It was in response to over-institutionalization, and abuses in institutions.
The rule, called the IMD rule, says a building for treating those with substance use disorders must be at least 1,200 feet from a secure residential treatment facility for those with mental and behavioral health issues.
Now 1,200 feet is a significant distance, about 80 car lengths. “While I understand the idea of the rule, it’s dumb for nowadays, it doesn’t work,” Magill said. He hopes to change it and has possible solutions to do so.
While Magill has seen the horror stories, he’s also seen people get help, get better, and return to the community. Those in recovery who “come out the other end, they are very, very powerful individuals. They have a lot to say.”
Magill recounted a formerly homeless man who nearly froze to death a few winters ago. He thought the man had later died. He actually heard from him earlier this year, when the man called Magill and told him, “I want to thank you for saving my life.”
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